Mélusine Velde is a franco-american ecologist and flower enthusiast from Chicago, Illinois. During her studies at the University of Chicago and Imperial College London, she supplemented her classroom studies with extensive exploration of the parks and trails around her campuses, and most importantly, the plants and animals that inhabit them. Her interests and passions in…
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Guest blog – The SEA EAGLE: was its extinction justified? by John A. Love
Born and bred in Inverness, with a zoology degree from Aberdeen, I managed the reintroduction of Sea Eagles from Norway to Rum 1975 to 1985, for NCC, and remain on the UK Project Team as an independent. Moved to South Uist as Area Officer for SNH/NatureScot covering Uist, Barra and St Kilda 1992-2006. Retired to…
Guest blog – A Farewell by Twitcher in the Swamp
If you read British Wildlife, the subscription-only magazine that was launched back in 1989, and which has now reached its 35th volume, you may know my column Twitcher in the Swamp. It began halfway through Volume 1, and finally ended at the end of Volume 34. I have grown old with Twitcher. A single page…
Bye, bye Amanda
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The news that Amanda Anderson is leaving the Moorland Association after 10 years as Director doesn’t come as a great surprise. Ten years of batting on a very sticky wicket would be enough for most people. Also, Amanda has not been very high profile for a few years and the Moorland Association’s Twitter feed is…
Sunday book review – The Complete Insect edited by David A. Grimaldi
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Naming your book ‘The Complete…[Anything]’ is quite a statement, calling it The Complete Insect when there are 3.5 million such species might seem like asking for trouble, but this book carries off such a claim very well. It is a book packed with gorgeous photographs, informative and clear diagrams and a wealth of facts. There…
Sunday book review – Tadpole Hunter by Arnold Cooke
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The author of this book was probably Britain’s first professional amphibian conservationist and his recollections of the evolution of the subject go back over five decades. Such insider accounts are valuable records of how we got to the current day. An idea of the importance of Arnold Cooke’s contributions to the field can be gauged…
Sunday book review – Finding W.H. Hudson by Conor Mark Jameson
Those who have worked at the RSPB Headquarters at Sandy, and some who have gone there for meetings, will have seen the portrait of Hudson above the stone fireplace in what used to be called the main meeting room where, long ago, staff used to have lunch served to them. He became a familiar sight,…
Sunday book review – Wildlife in the Balance by Simon Mustoe
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This is a very good book and contains a great number of insights into how animal ecology works and what we get from all those species of animal out there. Plants don’t get much of a look-in, which is strange at first, and will annoy many folk out there, but actually that is part…
Sunday book review – INN Search of Birds by John Lawton
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This is a fun book by a birder and one of the UK’s most eminent population ecologists. Prof Sir John Lawton CBE FRS has won numerous awards for his science and was the chair of a group which produced an important report known, as the Lawton report, Making Space for Nature, which recommended that England…
Sunday book review – Island to Island by Sally Mills
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This is a follow up to the same author’s Island to Island (reviewed here) but with the subtitle ‘A collection of photographs – the pictures behind the story‘. And it is a book of photographs with some words joining them together from the island of Aride in the Seychelles where the author was a warden…